Back in April 1961, I was ten years old and living with my parents and my sister, Ann, on a fruit farm near Uckfield, East Sussex. Life was idyllic but uneventful . . . until the day we were told that a real-life film star was moving into the house next door.
Her name was Vivien Leigh... Although I didn’t know it at the time, Vivien and Olivier had just divorced after 20 years of glamorous marriage that were overshadowed by Vivien’s manic depressive episodes.
Although Vivien always maintained her Eaton Square flat in London, she would use Tickerage Mill, the five bedroom Queen Anne house next to us, as a haven from the sorrow of losing Olivier and the vicissitudes of middle age.
Although she always called Ann and me ‘darlings’, we were careful to address her as ‘Lady Olivier’. Despite the fact that she and Lord Olivier were divorced, her Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce still bore the number plate VLO 1, and she still cherished her title. Unaware of this, my mother made the dreadful mistake of telephoning and asking to speak to ‘Miss Leigh’, whereupon Vivien said, extremely frostily: ‘This is Lady Olivier speaking.’
Another time, Vivien called to tell us that she would be walking in the woods with Peter Finch, the Australian actor with whom she had a devastating affair, that afternoon and that if we wanted she would introduce us. Peter Finch was handsome, charming and put me at ease to such a degree that I even asked him and Vivien to come to my school play. Looking back, I can’t believe I had such cheek.
Vivien’s own passion for Olivier, despite their divorce and his remarriage, remained undimmed. Although she had a romantic relationship with actor Jack Merivale, who hosted many of the parties at Tickerage, pouring drinks rather like a butler, I saw very little affection between them and she kept a life-size portrait of Olivier on the wall next to her bed.
Such was her love that when she came back from a trip and her housekeeper told her she had a surprise, Vivien jumped to the conclusion that Olivier was coming to Tickerage to see her. When the Uckfield District Town Band arrived, ready to play for her as a surprise, Vivien was inconsolable. She cried so much that the band had to be sent away.
